We took off at 10pm, had inflight dinner at 11pm, and then after 3 hours of upright, twisted neck, cramped leg sleep, we were woken for breakfast. Before landing at 5am, so Thursday was an interesting day.
Dawit our fixer met us at the airport with all the paperwork for our equipment, which given the effort that goes to getting it all listed, it was waved though very quickly. It was very refreshing to get outside Bole airport and into the fresh air.
Nothing can be done on our trip without written stamped permission. The government are very tight on paperwork and knowing what you are doing, more importantly where. So our first stop was to pick up our filming licence, this was all ready when we went to pick it up, but Dawit noticed that one of our major locations wasn't listed, this took them about an hour to tell us to come back later in the day to see if it was OK. It took them till 6pm and a further interview for them to agree, for reasons we'll never know.
During the middle of the day we went and met some of the major charities, Oxfam, Save the Children and introduce ourselves and find out as much information as possible. A few of the charities and finding it hard working with the government as well, so face to face meetings are better for us to find out better information as if the charities cross the authorities they get banned from travelling to certain areas.
This afternoon we also managed an interview with Felix Gomez from the World Food Programme. Always nice to get your first thing on tape.
Lunch bought my first cup of Ethiopian coffee, and it was as lovely as I thought it would be. Each other one throughout the afternoon got stronger and nicer, just the pick I needed for the afternoon.
In the evening, dinner in the hotel and Mike made some more calls to set up our next few days.
I took this opportunity to check over the kit, and to my horror discovered a missing lead, something I had actually been dreading. But seeing as I have bought backup kit for most eventualities it is not essential, we do however know people flying out on Saturday to where will be be for the broadcasting, so we are attempting to get them to bring it out to us, a bonus if they can.
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